Morty continued to flee, and ran through the outskirts of town, through the fields and up in to the hills. As the land grew studded with trees, and the rumbles faded, Morty took his opportunity and leaned against a tree to catch his breath.

He turned back and faced the town, from up in the hills he could see the erratic swath of destruction mega-Beckham had carved through Courage Falls. The few tall buildings, the apartments and offices that were tax shelters for those big city corporate types, were in ruin. The residential sector, having been built either from cinder blocks or dung thatch, were characteristically ablaze. The dung heaps that were near the explosion had burned like molten heaps of cow dung, which is what they were. The cinder block buildings bled black from their windowsills licked with fire, but they stayed standing.

Beckham stomped in circles, breathing bullets and using his ultra-X-ray power to cause ultra-cancer to the unwitting victims in his path.

Morty breathed in, coarse nostril hairs flaring. The destruction was beyond his comprehension. The shakeup had pulled him to full acuity and he was sure that he was seeing reality, he was just at a loss as to what to do.

As Morty sat, alone, gasping for breath in the wake of the destruction, he felt a pressure behind him and something wrapping around him, grasping him, the tendrils coarse as trees with trunks 2.4 meters wide.

He looked down and saw a gigantic decaying clawed hand gripping him. His feet left the ground and he went tense with fear.

After an extraordinarily long blink, he opened his eyes and found himself staring into the giant maw of the werewolf zombie. He was even larger now than when Morty had run afoul of him as a child. It appeared as thought he were at least seventeen point 9 feet tall, drooling spectral mucus and snarling a low growl through his perforated zombie neck.

“We meet again, Mortimer, and you have debts to pay.”

Morty could not remember much of his childhood or even his life before the seizures started.

“And here we are, you got what you wanted, and you got it from us. Now it is time for you to repay your debt.”

Morty stood there, paralyzed, not even thinking about struggling or escaping. The sudden surreality of the situation had overwhelmed him, and being gripped by a 2-story tall werewolf zombie is usually enough to make anyone question their sanity. At least quietly.

“The awakening of mega-Beckham is only the beginning, the first step in the final apocalypse of humanity. The underworld has been stewing. You puny humans have always been wrong, you spent thousands of years deifying nothing. Your political and religious leaders, your kings and peasants spend their lives pining for a supreme good, they were convinced of it because it was the only sane answer to the evils of the world.

“You people constructed this reality and refused to look at what was going on around you, they never noticed the lizards and trolls, they never noticed the vermin that lived in their alleys, the worlds that lived on the waste and recklessness of the affluent.

“And through those swings, they still believed something must counter the continuously growing forces of evil.

“And you, all of you humans were wrong. There is not a single evil, there is not a supreme evil, there is simply the parasitic existence of people other than the homogeneous lumps you have categorized into.

“And now it is unraveling. It is no coincidence that the conditions to create mega-Beckham happened over your fair town. Long has there been a dichotomy in these town walls between the nice facade the townsfolk try to live in and the activities that go on throughout the alleys and the surrounding areas.

“The caustic byproducts from the underground base, the throngs of artificial rats, the society of the homeless, and those willing to be crazy for their own theories. All of these have congregated in your town, along with the hypnotized drones you dragged out here. You had been touched, you have seen the visions, you know what shepherds your contemptible breed.

“And you have been given ample opportunity throughout your life, you have been given dumb luck and extraordinary abilities, these things that you squandered, neither helping those that gave you power, or helping those for your own common good. You lone moral sense has been twisted into abominable selfishness.

“This day has been destined for thousands of years, we are all but pawns, but most of us have been at least willing.”

Out in the distance, you could hear a lone wolf call, which set off a flurry of echoes in the distance. They kept reverberating, and Morty could tell that they were drawing nearer.

“You hear that, Mortimer? My kind is drawing nearer, we will gather here, before the rift and work to achieve the power that has been denied us since the curse. And you, Morty will aid us.”

Morty regained composure and took a deep breath. With one fluid motion, he reared his head back and smashed his indestructible face into the werewolfs clenched teeth.

He missed, though, and hit the zombie werewolf on the nose. Gigantic werewolf zombie nose is nothing pleasant, mind you, but it seemed to make an impression. The zombie dropped him and grasped his snout with a yelp. Whiny little bitch.

Morty fell to the ground and ran off into the woods. He could hear the howling getting louder around him and he looked over his shoulder as he scurried, he could see the great wolf recover and let a low guttural roar. He fell to his knees and crawled out of the bushes into the corn fields.

In the distance, he could see the glow of the ruining city, and behind them a rapidly growing collective of zombie werewolves. Twilight had faded into night time, and the moon was full and hung brightly in the sky, the glowing of the town providing an orange outline to the stalks of corn surrounding him.

Disoriented and completely lost, Morty was once again dragging himself through unfamiliar territory and feeling physically deficient. He would occasionally stop, lying low, trying to gauge his distance from the exploding calamities, and would carry forward. After about 20 minutes of this, he accidentally put his hand into a family of weasels, all hiding in the corn. The weasels were shaking with fright and immediately dispersed, but not without giving a few bites to Morty’s shoulders. The pain was not crippling, but certainly more than he wanted to deal with.

He made a mental note to check more closely for weasels as he crawled through the corn. The great zombie werewolf had apparently not given immediate chase, and he could hear him roaring back where he was first accosted. The outlying howls seemed to be congregating.

Morty decided to make a break for it. He pulled himself to his feet and broke in as much of a run as he could muster. From the outlying corn fields, he could see a church off in the distance. And made his way there, keeping a watchful eye on the still rampaging mega-Beckham in the distance.

And no for some unspectacular, end-of-book filler:

Hi folks, its me, Vaclav. I often play an illiterate foreign character of the same name. Oh, sure, I regale you with tales of my antics, drinking, fighting goats. I give you recipes, that involve pastiche flower and boiled shrimp. Most of those I just slap together in order to keep myself from the roving insanity. Yes, this truly has nothing to do with the rest of the book, but is easier than trying to shoehorn a plot of all the incoherent gibberish that has made up this book so far. Now here is the problem. I, Vaclav have now created an identity of incoherence, but in order to keep doing it, which is my bread and motherfucking butter, I must refine and add a new level of sophistication to the character of a simpleton. Strange, huh? So how does one go about that? This is a classic problem because there is no point in to trying to give depth to something that is one dimensional by design. However, if you can continue to produce the same thing at the same quality, it will become noticeably diluted. Should we then just carry on lack every other mediocre hack and just retread the same jokes, the same ideas. There is no real innovation, just a modification and synthesis of new ideas. So, I Vaclav, can continue my public life of unsophistication, or act as myself, which is so unremarkable that I had better luck as a simpleton. Right? So where does that leave Vaclav? Vaclav has identity crisis! Vaclav need goat milk! Vaclav tell now favorite Larmen recipe: Take Turkey blood, gravey vessel and burn to crisp, serve with lye! See? Its just the same old shit, but not quite as funny, the retreading of these ideas just make it seem more and more half-assed. So here I am, writing through a phony character in the last few pages just to space it out because I can’t even bullshit through the plot. well, not at full typing speed at least. So where does this leave Vaclav? Irrelevant, mostly.

How’d that go?

Morty made his way out of the field in to the back lot of the church, he could hear seas of incoherent muttering beyond the fence and the aimless shuffling of feet. He could feel the fear and discontent even though he couldnt see any of the faces. He crossed the neightboring lot and made his way to the front of the church.

Pushing open the door, he saw the pews filled with transients, many he recognized from walking through the streets and guiding the homeless. There were few of the clergy available to help. The tension was high for many, but the church population were largely the truly insane or helpless. The only one who could sit through the preachy bullshit and managed to follow the rules. At least during the daytime.

He pushed his way through the sea of hands, instinctively reaching out to the man in the suit. He made his way to the altar and called out.

“People of Courage Falls! Please listen!”

He was ignored, a lone scruffy wino stared up from the audience, his lips were moving like he was shrieking, but no sound was coming out.

Morty sighed in frustration. He could tell mega-Beckham would come for them sooner or later, and that there was a flock of 20 foot werewolf zombies who seemed to think he owed them something.

“What could possibly happen now?” he thought.

Outside, mega-Beckham was still in roid-rage mode. He was scattering his X-rays and stomping out anything that he could see. Mostly weasels. Courage Falls has lots of weasels for some reason. Not like the huge flocks of neurel net connected animatronic hive mind rats, that was something else.

mega-Beckham was completely unaware of anything other than what was in front of his foot, and what else would make for a good futbol stomp. His rage of energy had burned away his athletic gear, and he was once again clothed in the decaying skins of thousands of eyeless merchants and helpless woodland animals that had been aging through the centuries.

His power grew unabated, bullet breath turned to fire vision and his steps caused earth quakes. He focused his vision on the river and it boiled with toxic acid. His high pitched scream shattered windows beyond the earthquakes. He was truly destroying cities.

He stopped, roared and jumped up into the sky where he was no longer visible.

Morty watched all this out of the back of the shattered stained glass windows that had once lined the church. He saw that it was his chance to break, and he tuned in to his most focused hypnotic glare and pointed his gaze direectly at the mute screaming man. He got his gaze and the man reached his arms out. He pulled two other nearby stragglers and turned their eyes toward Morty, they in turn reached out, and a wave of silence grew over the swelling seas of hypnotized bums.

Morty stepped down from the alter, and the path cleared before them. He walked silently through the path to the main entrance, kicked the doors open, and beckoned the people to follow him. They marched quietly, shuffling their feet, never breaking their gaze from the new found leader.

Out the door and back on the street, Morty broke in to a run, and the tribe followed behind him. He was trying to get them out of town, away from mega-Beckhams targets, away from any other danger, except the weasels.

As they ran, the ambient light grew, behind them there was an violent orange glow, that chased the moon light, a loud thundering sonic boom shook the air. Morty turned back and gasped in horror, mega-Beckham came tearing down through the atmosphere, completely engulfed in flame. He landed and sent a large shockwave and fireball around him, turning the old down town into cinders and cracking the earth diagonally across Courage Falls neatly planned “lots of squares” town design.

Steam poured from the fissures and the fires spread immediately. The fissure was visible from a distance, and small spigots of lava began to spray. Morty signaled to the rest of the tribe to follow him and they kept running, back trying to distance themselves from the birth of the apocalypse.

The tribe ran back into the surrounding countryside and up into the foot hills. mega-Beckham seemed to have taken a break from the destruction to just wail endlessly. As he shrieked, a pillar of fire grew from him and evaporated any clouds. The stars began to disappear, and even though it was night, the surrounding fires had turned the area as light as day.

As they made it into the foothills, they found a small clearing of rocks that fed in to a shallow cave. Together, they huddled in whatever shade they could find. Morty stood alone on one of the higher rocks and watched the pillar of flame rise. It looked as thought it was licking and scarring the atmosphere. Black plumes of smoke worked downward and the heat began to rise.

The fissure spread, and more of the ground began to break away. Morty watched it spread until the crumbling appeared to have unearthed and underground structure. It had been broken open in the chaos and he could see a few people in lab coats climbing out and running away from all the destruction.

As the crumbling continued, it unearthed a large passageway, reinforced with steel. An automated plank came out of the passage and raised it up to the ground level. After a long delay, Morty saw some unusual types of vehicles emerging.

Tanks.

The military installation had finally been uncovered, and even had a contingency for the use of getting their experimental vehicles out around the town in the case of an emergency lockdown. This plan seemed appropriate, given the circumstances, and a small batallion of tanks was soon on the far side of town, skirting around the fissure and trying not to catch mega-Beckahms attention as he scorched the sky. As they moved in to position, 3 military helicopters came out, keeping their distance, and floating behind mega-Beckham.

Morty wanted a piece of the action. He turned and silently hypnotized the church folk and bums to stay in place, he was going to go look for more and see if he could get anyone else out of the town. He said this of course, without even talking. Because he was really good at hypnosis.

As he made it back in to town, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. In the flaming light, he suit looked fancier than normal. And then he realized he was famished. He looked in through a shattered window at one of the not completely ruined homes and saw an easily available jar of carrots and oil. He paused, wondering if it was right to steal food in a disaster.

The burning fires had left pillows of ash floating through the town which fell to earth almost tranquilly. And then, Morty saw something else float down in front of him. It looked almost like a snowflake. He pulled his eyes off of the delicious jar of carrots and oil and looked around. The single flakes were outnumbering the ash.

In the middle of the fire and destruction, it had some how begun to snow. A gentle breeze blew by and a flake landed on Morty’s lip. He licked it off and it dissolved, leavng a taste of chemicals behind.

“Why, this isnt snow at all … whats going on?”

Even though it wasnt snow, it was having a chilling effect on the lava geysers and the flow slowed. The snow fell thicker and began to stick to the ground. The sheer volume was astonishing. A slight wind grew stronger and blew the snow into a single pile.

Morty sat there for a few minutes, just watching the swirling patterns, he himself enraptured in the supernatural patterns building the huge pile ahead of him. From the sky above the rapily growing mountain, a lone figure, human sized lowered from the sky, apparently held by nothing. It levitated down slowly, unmoved by the swirling gales that had been emerging. He touched down lightly on top of the mountain.

The figure cried: “BECKHAM! You are threatening industry, you are threatening our way of life, we are the ones who accepted you, gave you what you want, and now you try to bring the end of the world. This apocalypse will consume you, too Beckham, you will not see the end of this day!”

Strider war child reeled back and gathered his power, the winds shifted and the swirling snow gathered into a large boulder, it spun in an orbit around him and sling shot around to be launched directly at Beckhams head.

Once it left the safety of the carefully manipulated winds, the giant ball of cocaine caught on fire and flew potently towards the target, as it neared the fire changed from orange to blue and looked to be frozen in place. The ball smashed across mega-Beckham’s face and disrupted the giant fire pillar.

The tanks, now in a protected formation took this as an opprotunity to blast away. Beckhams initial confused belch was quickly offset by several sharp yelps as explosions rocked across his aged traveler pelts.

Even the best of the puny humans weapons had little effect except to make mega-Beckham really really pissed off. He clenched his fists and slammed against the ground. The tanks shook in place, but had been well fortified against this, they were experimental tanks after all. The helicopters took the initiative to fly to the back of his head and launch some more missles. This seriouslly was just gonna piss of Beckham. He was immortal, remember?

Strider war child barely stirred, he stayed fleet foot on top of his mountain of cocaine. He fluttered along, making a cocaine walkway through the air that supported him.

Morty pushed his way into the apartment, and grabbed the jar of carrots. He pulled it to his face and dumped the jar straight into his mouth, swallowing the carrots whole. Its easier to do that when they are packed in olives. They were baby carrots too, not some gargantuan root. He was a Minnesotan, not a sword swallower. He made his way back out to the street and headed into the alley, trying to stay out of view of Strider war child and cautious of anything that might be a werewolf. As he ran, he stumbled across more homeless people, or townsfolk confused but not killed in the chaos. He refined his hypnosis to give directions, and as he stared at each person, he could refer them to the enclave on the outside of town.

“Im pretty sure its the end of the world” Morty said to himself.

As he weaved through town, he had to find new routes, and to stay away from the lava that was still encroaching despite the lava cooling flaming cocaine that was falling from the skies in harmony with the ash from the burning buildings.

The further he went into town and followed the fissure, the closer he came to beckham. Strider war childs onslaughts had cooled much of the fire around there, so all that was to watch for was the lumbering giants stomping, and the shrapnel from the unyielding attacks by the military vehicles.

As he drew nearer to the massive feet, he could see black figures crawling up across his shoes and ankles. The zombie werewolves had apparently seen the lack of fire as the opportunity to attack the giant. And were making their way up the lattice of pelts snarling furiously and swiping at mega-Beckhams immortal flesh.

Strider war child strode along his cocaine bridge and approached Beckhams midriff. As he strode, he flung huge rocks of chilling cocaine at anything that moved, especially mega-Beckham.

One of the werewolves clambered up and lunged off of the pelts and at strider war child. Strider war child deftly stepped aside, but the werewolf clung to the lingering cocaine bridge, and swiped at Strider war child’s feet, catching a claw on one of his boots. Strider war child dissolved the bridge and began a fearless free fall. The werewolf latched on to the rest of the boots, and caught a pelt on the way down. So the two of them were locked in a mortal struggle, hanging off of the clothing of pelts.

With his concentration broken, the gale winds and endless snow of cocaine quietly ceased. Morty continued to the base of the shoe. Careful to stay under cover, and out of sight.

“What the hell am I doing here?” Morty thought to himself. “I was just trying to help the local economy. Just trying to do right. Now, here I am at the bridge of the apocalypse, looking at a spectral man-bitch from hell, covered in zombie werewolves, one of them attacking a patron of industry with a masterful control of cocaine, all the while being attacked by experimental military vehicles while a flock of insane homeless people are huddled in fear and hypnosis by me.

“Now, what am I supposed to do?”

In his moment of self doubt, he huddled down to the ground, and began to pull himself under a collapsed building. He reached in hand first and felt a handful of fur and some sharp teeth.

The rat bit his hand and squealed, it ran through the crack and lunged right at his indestructible face. It latched on to his nose, and would not let go. Morty grabbed the rat firmly and pulled it straight back. He would have been fucked if his face were destructable like a normal persons.

He looked the rat straight in the eye, and it went passive, almost limp. It held his gaze, and seemed to be waiting. Morty recognized the telltale signs of hypnosis.

“But thats impossible,” rodents aren’t smart enough to have the power of suggestion. He looked beyond his gaze and into the recesses of the space he had been crawling into. He saw several pairs of eyes twinkling in the dark. Passively watching with the same expession as the one in his hand.

Morty narrowed his eyes and stared at the rat. The hive mind was on full alert, and had developed enough sophistication to be susceptible to suggestion, and Morty was a master of suggestion. Clutching the rat, he stared in its eyes and called to the other rats. The twinkling eyes grew nearer, and one by one, the rats in the shadows emerged. He looked around and could see the swarms that had been flooding and scattering begin to well up in the street again. The first comers formed a small circle around him, and it quickly filled in, never breaking the bonds. They piled on top of each other and formed a living cone around him. All the while, Morty stood motionless, with the control rat in his hand. Morty was now protected by a heavy wall of synthetic rats. He made a quick retreat, and the rats shifted their ever changing structure to follow his steps. He dropped the control rat, and kept focused on the wall in front of them. He managed to work a small openeing so he could see in front of him, crossed the street and found shelter in a small collapsed hovel, just out of the range of mega-Beckhams feet.

Staring at the rats, he pleaded that they all gather around him. The hive mind tightened its grip and began to pull the hordes around. A small group of rats gathereed around his feet and wedged themselves under his shoe, evenly distributing the weight. They began to run in the direction Morty was looking, and Morty lost his balance. He fell backward, and was caught and supported by several layers of rats. The handful that had been under his feet had quadrupled in number and he was no longer on the ground. The swelling pack of rats was lifting him up, and he soon found himself back on his feet, coasting on a surf of writhing rats. They were moving quickly as a group, all running at top speed to keep up with each other, they pulled Morty toward beckham, and he coasted as if standing on a sloped sheet of ice, directly toward the feet. He was 24.8 feet in the air now, just over the tops of backhams shoes, and the rats had built an elliptical base around beckham that was rising in a waving column, pushing Morty higher and higheras he spun around mega-Beckham.

Having realized that the military vehivles were no threat, beckham returned to his earlier pose and ignored the surrounding forces and began scorching the atmosphere, screaming in his high pitched troll roar.

The rat wall had reached his midriff, with Morty still coasting on the top. Some of the zombie werewolves lept off the midriff and on to the rat wall, trying to catch the wave as it came across. It proved far more difficult than clinging to the pelts so they quickly returned.

Finlly, the writhing rat wall, completely surrounding the squatting mega-Beckham, reached his eyes. They forced out an alcove, and Morty came face to face with the spectral man bitch of hell.

“You!” said Morty. “It was you that did it to me, you broke my mind down, you made my mind go bad. And now you are here, destroying my town, trying to bring on the end of the world!”

mega-Beckham opened his eyes, and Morty, for the first time, did not have a seizure when seeing his face. mega-Beckham smiled a stupid looking euro trash smile, and blew on Morty. The blast knocked him directly backward and Morty fell toward the ground.

The hive mind had anticipated such an accident, but to be resiliant had calculated the lowest energy way to monitor and react, a single spindle of rats shot out, all running across each other, but they missed, they did not account for the weight of Morty’s indestructible face and could not manage it properly.

And as he fell to the ground, Morty had flashbacks, he saw every bad dream, every drunken night, every lost memory. Everything that he had willingly or unwillingly forgotten came back to him, he was drowning in the guild of his unkept responsibilities when a gloved hand caught the collar of his fancy suit.

“Well, that was a classic boner you almost pulled.” said Strider war child, dusting Morty with cocaine. Looks like you need a pick me up, maybe some of your rat friends too…”

Strider war child pointed at the wall and a fine layer of dust blew across the burgeoning rat wall. He noticed a marked increase in activity. Morty also felt great for some reason, and most of his pain seemed to have gone away.

“Who are you, again?” Morty asked.

“Silly human, Im Strider war child, and this is my mountain of cocaine. I represent industry.”

Morty reagained his composure, thanked Strider war child politely and jumped back across to the rat wall. It moved and accomdated him and worked him back to the top of the wave. This time, they kept him as a moving target in front of mega-Beckham.

Morty struggled just to keep his balance, the robot cocaine rats were moving him around unstably, and he watched as the great zombie werewolf led the pack in climbing up the giant English troll. He came up across the shoulder and ran around to the back of his head. The rat wall had locked out the tank firings, and the helicopters and long since run out of ammunition and landed to refuel with experimental helicopter fuel.

The great wolf crawled up across mega-Beckhams scalp, clawing and stabbing all the way, making a ferocious show of the matter, Beckhams flame pillar was wavering with the now constant distractions and the zombie werewolfs efforts were noticeably disturbing him.

Meanwhile, Strider war child was throwing deadly balls of cocaine directly at the wolfs head, but to no avail. Beckham always closed his eyes, or managed to blow them away with a gust of wind.

“Its his eyes,” screamed the champion of industry, Strider war child , “keep his eyes open!”

The great wolf slid down mega-Beckhams forehead and caught his claws on the bridge of his nose. Beckham tried flailing his arms, but routinely came up against the wall of rats that were completely constricting him.

The great wolf reached over and pried open mega-Beckhams eyes. At the same time, Strider war child threw a massive boulder of cocaine directly into them. Morty shuddered in disappointment as it crumbled harmlessly against his immortal eyes.

“Morty!” screamed the great wolf, “use your face!”

Strider war child reared his head and gathered a Morty sized ball of cocaine. Suddnely, the wave of rats buckled, throwing Morty far inito the air.

Strider war child wound up and pitched the ball into Morty, who found himself wedged in it, indestructible face first flinging towards mega-Beckham.

The werewolf pulled the eye wide, and buckled back as Morty’s face shatted through mega-Beckhams mega-Cornea.

Morty was covered in cocaine, buried deep in the eyeball fluid of mega-Beckhams right eye. He squirmed and pushed and pulled himself out, as he moved, a continuous stream of cocaine took his displacement.

The great wolf palmed Morty and leaped off mega-Beckham into the wall of rats, which carried them off strictly after the storm.

Strider war child followed running along his floating cocaine bridge. When they had gotten far enough, they turned around and watched mega-Beckham shreiking. The wound in his eye had begun to drain out the rest of his body. He was falling, streams of blood erupted from his skin and his wikid body burned in fire of the torment of the thousands he had butchereed over the years. He stumbled forward, blinded and flailing, and fell directly into the fissure, screaming, never to be seen again.

Strider war child sealed off the fissure with his waning coke stash, then joined the group of sentient rats, homeless people, and zombie werewolves.

“Well, the important thing is that we all worked together.” Morty said.

Your child can cuddle it, talk to it, see realistic responses – and yet you can turn it off after playtime without worrying about it starving or getting fleas or needing expensive vet bills.. Fur Real!!…

Developers who are investing in Port Aransas real estate, believe that the area which is within close driving distance of the growing metropolises of San Antonio and Austin will remain the choice destination for a family getaway or a retirement vacatio…

Developers who are investing in Port Aransas real estate, believe that the area which is within close driving distance of the growing metropolises of San Antonio and Austin will remain the choice destination for a family getaway or a retirement vacation for many years to come. Investors from California, Florida and the East Coast are also becoming increasingly aware of the many attractions that coastal community of Port Aransas has to offer from its fine restaurants that serve fresh coastal cuisine,its…